Possible Deadline Change for Space Shuttles?
“We could restart things,” said John Shannon, a veteran flight director who now oversees the multibillion-dollar program. “You can do anything for a certain amount of money and investment of time, but I think the nation and NASA need to decide if that is really in the best interest of continuing on with what we would like to do in space.”
According to several independent safety experts, the original deadline of 2010 for the NASA space shuttles would be dangerous to launch to space if extended, naming a gap of five years in our ability to safely launch the United States astronauts to the International Space Station until 2015 – requiring a fee of $42 million dollar per astronaut to pay Russia for transportation for each trip up – a crew of 7 astronauts times $21 million, plus one going back – another $21 million. WOW!! And would that all be from Russia’s “oldest” launching pad in the world? Of course, that date of 2015 is rather debatable due to the continuous money cuts and quality of work going on with the shuttle’s replacements.
Additionally, 6,400 jobs would be cut at the Kennedy Space Center if the shuttles were retired, with nothing else available to replace the job cuts. But those same experts say that those jobs could be cut if the shuttles were flown twice a year until our rockets and spaceships were ready to go. The U.S. Representatives Dave Weldon and Tom Feeney thought that another $2 billion per year could help the NASA missions and speed up development of spacecraft. If they have enough clout, their plan could save a lot of jobs and reduce a lot of money going to Russia, eliminating or reducing the five-year gap which is looming ahead of us.
What is odd is that everything had to come this far before anyone thought, “Gee, that is a lot of money to be spent for the remaining shuttle flights, and a lot of jobs let go.” How sad, but that is our true leadership. No wonder we may be in trouble economically in our country with this kind of future planning going on. But NASA is saying if they do not shut down the shuttle program, they will not have the money to funnel into the new moon-Mars program. “I don’t mean to sound either cavalier about it or glib,” NASA Administrator Mike Griffin said. “We are bringing the shuttle program to a close in 2010. And it will have a very difficult effect on the local work force. If we don’t retire in 2010, then we will not have the money to bring a new system online by 2015.”
Weldon has other ideas. In December, he introduced a bill to give NASA the money to keep the shuttle fleet flying beyond 2010 and invest an extra $1 billion a year in development of new Ares rockets and Orion spacecraft. Going back and forth with the experts, Waldon also says, “There is a solution to this,” the Republican from Indialantic said. “It’s not cost prohibitive. You keep the shuttle flying to 2013. You accelerate the development of the Orion, and plan on deploying it not in 2015, but in 2013 or 2014. You can effectively have a lot of mitigation by doing that.” But NASA is dragging its feet on it all, for some reason or another.
This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 9th, 2008 at 2:04 am and is filed under Public Relations, Space Agency News, Technical Concerns, The Gear to Get There. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
